Your standard and the best you can do

As a guy, your standard determines whether a girl is worth your time and energy to be with, as opposed to being alone. But what determines your standard? Think about it for a moment.

The answer is that you subconsciously picture the best you can do, i.e. the highest-value girl you could ever hope to get. Then you adjust that bar down to a slightly lower-value girl that you could realistically get, and that’s your standard.

Notice how the graphs visualize this well-known truth about the dating market: